The Candice Malcolm Show - The knives come out against Erin O’Toole

00:00:00.000 The knives have come out against Conservative Party leader Erin O'Toole, and the Conservative

00:00:03.760 Party and its leader, as well as the elites running that party, may be finally forced to

00:00:08.380 face their own base. And let me tell you, the Conservative base is not happy. I'm Candace

00:00:12.420 Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into

00:00:20.800 The Candace Malcolm Show. Let me tell you, there is anger that is brewing in the Conservative

00:00:24.880 Party. It is finally starting to bubble over into the public. There is infighting in the

00:00:29.920 party, and we're going to talk about it and break it all down on the program today. I

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00:01:50.680 to have independent media. So let me talk about what's happening in the conservative

00:01:56.260 party. Because basically, since the election ended, there's been a lot of grumbling. There's

00:02:01.000 been a lot of dissatisfaction among the base. On the show, I dedicated probably two weeks

00:02:06.100 every single day to talking about the various ways of how Aaron O'Toole failed, how he failed

00:02:10.680 to win the election, but also how he failed conservatives. He failed to promote a vision of conservative

00:02:15.000 ideas and policies. He flip-flopped on all of his core principles. So go back to when

00:02:19.820 he was running for leader of the party. He presented himself as an authentic, common sense,

00:02:25.400 the real deal, someone who was really going to cut through the noise, who was going to defend

00:02:29.960 Canadian values, defend our culture, push back against the woke left, and really stand for

00:02:35.440 something, stand his ground. He wasn't going to cave to the latest fads of the kooky left.

00:02:40.220 And really, that's what we wanted to hear. The last thing that Canada needs is yet another

00:02:45.840 socially trendy left-wing progressive party. We already have, what, four of those? And

00:02:51.160 conservatives are supposed to provide something different. They're supposed to stand their

00:02:54.540 ground. They're supposed to defend the sort of traditions and the basic institutions of our

00:02:59.660 country against all of the sort of latest trends and fads from the progressive left. That's what we

00:03:04.580 want from a conservative government. That's what we want from a conservative leader. That's what many

00:03:07.940 of us thought we had in Aaron O'Toole. But then the election came and we saw that he really didn't

00:03:13.300 want to do that. He wanted, his strategy was to sort of near the Trudeau liberals, to sort of repeat

00:03:18.620 whatever they're saying, whatever they believed on an issue. That's what Aaron O'Toole believed into.

00:03:22.760 So the election was fought on all the things that Justin Trudeau and the liberals wanted to talk

00:03:26.400 about. And rather than seeing Aaron O'Toole stand their ground and defend conservatism while also

00:03:32.040 leveling effective attacks on Justin Trudeau, we saw the opposite. We saw O'Toole was defensive

00:03:37.640 and because of that he just ended up caving and flip-flopping on all of the sort of major core

00:03:43.020 issues that that was being talked about on the election, whether it was vaccine mandates for

00:03:47.340 the civil service, whether it was on carbon taxes, whether it was on the legal rights of gun owners

00:03:53.300 in Canada to legally own their property. All of those issues we saw O'Toole just sort of cave and

00:03:59.080 the strategy didn't even pay off. It's not like he did all that, he conceded, he threw conservatives out

00:04:03.620 of the bus and he won or he gained ground. The opposite. He lost ground. Canadians weren't

00:04:07.800 interested. They saw someone who was sort of wavering, someone who was weak, someone who was

00:04:11.760 perhaps willing to say anything to get elected. They didn't like what they saw. They passed on him.

00:04:16.600 And so I think it's only right that the conservatives now do some soul-searching, do the difficult task

00:04:21.960 of saying, no, this is a failed strategy. We don't want to go down this path. Let's find a new leader

00:04:27.120 who can enthusiastically defend conservatives, who's authentic, who will be who they say they

00:04:32.000 are going to be, who presents themselves based on what they really believe in, not someone who's

00:04:36.380 just really willing to say anything to get elected. So here on the Candace Malcolm Show here at True

00:04:39.920 North, we went through in great detail all of the various ways that the conservatives were failed

00:04:45.160 or were let down by this leader. Interestingly, at the time, though, you know, there was definitely

00:04:49.940 grumblings. There was murmurings that I heard from lots of people within the conservative party,

00:04:54.540 as well as people outside small C conservative activists, people who were really the activists

00:05:00.560 of the party were the ones who were the most truly disappointed. The people who were more willing

00:05:04.480 to defend the status quo and Aaron O'Toole were sort of more the insiders, the sort of lobbyist

00:05:09.900 class, those kind of people who just sort of want to go along and get along and didn't want to make

00:05:14.560 any changes, just said, look, O'Toole's better than anyone else. Let's just go with the devil that we

00:05:18.560 know kind of idea. So now here we are two months later, and we're starting to see more of an uprising,

00:05:23.460 more people, more voices come out and say, no, no, Aaron O'Toole is not the guy for the job.

00:05:28.680 And so this was all led this week by conservative senator from Saskatchewan, Denise Batters, who

00:05:33.360 launched a petition to review Aaron O'Toole's CPC leadership within six months. So Batters is calling

00:05:40.100 on the conservatives to hold a review of O'Toole's leadership in the next six months, rather than

00:05:44.860 waiting for 2023. She released a video this morning and launched a campaign. And so I'll play a bit of

00:05:50.700 the video. But like I said, that the points that she's making here are completely correct. There

00:05:55.380 are exactly the same things that we have been talking about here on the program for the past

00:05:59.260 two months. Basically, under Aaron O'Toole's leadership, the party isn't growing, the party

00:06:04.140 is stuck. And really, when you have a leader who seems to be embarrassed and distancing himself

00:06:09.120 from the core values and ideas and principles of conservatism, you got a problem. And so that is

00:06:14.480 what Senator Denise Batters is saying in this video. Let's play this clip. 0.99

00:06:18.600 Aaron O'Toole lost this election by every measure. Our party lost half a million votes,

00:06:24.480 claimed fewer seats and a lower popular vote than in 2019. We lost diverse seats and MPs in the GTA,

00:06:31.560 Alberta, and in Vancouver suburbs. Mr. O'Toole's inability to communicate or connect with female 0.68

00:06:37.440 voters left us with an even wider gender gap. Aaron O'Toole lost a trust election to Justin Trudeau,

00:06:44.760 of all people. This campaign was not lost because of Mr. O'Toole's mistakes or inexperience. It was

00:06:51.580 lost because of what Canadian voters perceive as his character flaw, that he is not trustworthy.

00:06:57.840 You can't come back from that. Aaron O'Toole lectured our party members on election night,

00:07:02.860 telling us we need to have the courage to change into what he hasn't yet said. But members deserve

00:07:09.780 to have a say on this change and the future direction of this party, including our leadership.

00:07:15.520 Fellow Conservative Party members, join me in signing this petition and make your voice heard.

00:07:23.500 So Global News is reporting that her petition is part of a, quote, multi-step campaign that includes

00:07:28.780 MPs and senators as well as current and former party officials that want O'Toole

00:07:32.840 gone after September's disappointing election. So the website that was launched, membersvote.ca,

00:07:38.960 outlines the process for which this could happen. It says, the official petition under the Conservative

00:07:43.800 Party of Canada constitution was launched by Senator Denise Batters on November 15th, 2021.

00:07:49.680 To succeed within 90 days, 5% of Conservative members in five provinces must sign the petition. And it

00:07:56.500 notes that in the Conservative Party constitution, all of the territories come together to constitute

00:08:00.700 one province. So the threshold is pretty low there. 5% of Conservative members in just five provinces are

00:08:06.760 needed in order to launch a leadership review. And so, you know, this is really interesting because

00:08:11.600 we had, like I said, lots of murmuring, lots of sort of whispering among Conservative insiders and

00:08:17.680 Conservative activists, but not a lot of high profile Conservatives willing to come out and say this

00:08:22.980 directly that it is time to replace leader. We did have a handful of MPs, Shannon Stubbs, a couple of others

00:08:28.740 who basically said more or less the same thing, that they were unhappy with the direction that O'Toole was

00:08:32.900 taking the party, but nothing this direct. So Denise Batters really puts herself out there. Good for you,

00:08:39.120 Denise Batters. Good for you to articulate this because, like I said, it is the feelings and the attitude of so many

00:08:45.680 Conservatives that I have been talking to in the base that feel the exact same way. So Denise Batters really willing

00:08:50.720 to stick her neck out. And I know there's some criticism saying, oh, she's an unelected senator. But that's sort of the 1.00

00:08:55.780 purpose. The idea here is that within the Conservative caucus, if you're a Conservative MP, you might not be

00:09:00.580 happy with Aaron O'Toole, but you kind of rely on him. He's the one that is leading the party. If you

00:09:06.160 want to have a position, if you want to be part of the, they call the shadow cabinet, or if you want to

00:09:09.940 have a critic role, you have to be nice to him. You kind of have to suck up to him. And you can't really 0.98

00:09:14.160 express the views that you might be hearing from your constituents, hearing from your base. You can't

00:09:17.920 really represent the anger that you're hearing out there because at the end of the day, you know, you want a

00:09:23.440 position, you want a job, and you don't want to basically burn your boss publicly. And so it is

00:09:28.860 important in that way that you have a senator like Denise Batters who is able to do that because she's 1.00

00:09:33.360 sort of removed from the internal confines of the caucus. And in some ways, she can represent Conservative

00:09:38.720 members better than some of the MPs. So of course, Denise Batters is far from alone. We know that a

00:09:44.640 national councillor, Bert Chen, also launched a petition to have a review of Aaron O'Toole, but he was

00:09:51.040 suspended. He was kicked out of the National Council. At first, we were told it was suspended up to 60

00:09:55.400 days. Now, Hill Times is reporting the suspension is indefinite. And we know, as reported by True

00:10:01.280 North, that there was a letter that was sent to Bert Chen, basically describing a witch hunt. The

00:10:06.840 Conservative Party is going after Bert Chen, demanding to see his private communications, including a list of

00:10:13.040 anyone he talked to about Aaron O'Toole, emails, texts, phone records, handwritten notes, anything. It really

00:10:18.880 is ugly. It's a witch hunt. So the Conservative Party and the OLO, the Opposition Leader's Office, 0.89

00:10:24.820 is focusing their effort and their resources on attacking their own members and sort of squashing

00:10:29.620 out dissent, rather than trying to understand what went wrong in the last election, rather than trying

00:10:34.720 to focus on Justin Trudeau and the Liberals. And we've heard from other Conservative leaders and

00:10:39.640 insiders. This is a thread from Dean Dalmastro. Dean Dalmastro is a former member of Parliament for the

00:10:45.560 Conservatives in the Harper government. And I'm going to read his thread because I think this is

00:10:49.720 really accurate and a good way of thinking about things. So Dean Dalmastro says this,

00:10:54.080 The Federal Liberal Party changed leaders after every losing election beginning in 2006.

00:10:58.760 The same arguments about staying united and focusing on fighting the other party were made

00:11:03.660 particularly in the case of Stéphane Dion. They were wrong. Does anyone believe that if given another

00:11:08.820 chance, Stéphane Dion would have defeated Stephen Harper? Well, of course not. Stéphane Dion was terrible and

00:11:14.420 the Liberals were right to get rid of him. But going back to Dalmastro's tweet here, it says,

00:11:18.400 The Liberals made the change and Michael Ignatia did even worse. He resigned and they changed later

00:11:23.520 again. The party survived four different leaders in four successive elections. Recent history shows

00:11:28.840 that those arguing that Denise Batter's efforts are cause for celebration for Justin Trudeau and the

00:11:33.040 Liberal Party are wrong. The truth is they're concerned that Aaron O'Toole or his policies will not

00:11:37.640 survive a vote of membership and with good cause. Given the rising cost of energy, groceries and the cost of

00:11:43.400 living generally, it will not be easy for Aaron O'Toole to justify his decision to support carbon

00:11:47.680 taxes. Also, social conservatives feel betrayed and the West is just flat out angry and feeling

00:11:52.700 abandoned by the conservative leader. The bottom line is that now is the only time that a leadership

00:11:56.880 review can occur and should. The suggestion that a review can wait until 2023, a time when an election

00:12:02.520 could be imminent, is dishonest at best. It's really a way to simply avoid membership altogether.

00:12:08.260 The Conservative Caucus may be divided on the issue, but the decision on who leads the party is not

00:12:13.140 theirs to make. That responsibility rests solely with Conservative members. The leader must have the

00:12:18.800 confidence and support of membership, which can only be demonstrated with a full membership vote.

00:12:24.360 So this is really right and I read the whole thing because I think it illuminates what one of the sort

00:12:29.240 of deeper issues here is that it seems that Aaron O'Toole is afraid of the base. It seems like he

00:12:33.880 doesn't want to face the base. He knows that he threw them under the bus, that he did so many things

00:12:38.000 throughout the campaign to anger them. And so his best hope is really to have caucus rally around him

00:12:43.660 and say, no, we're not going to allow this senator's petition to make its way to the base.

00:12:48.640 But what does this say about Aaron O'Toole? That he can't even face his own base. He can't even make

00:12:52.820 the case to his own members, to his own party, as to why he should continue to lead the party

00:12:57.280 into the next general election. I think that that shows just how far Aaron O'Toole has come from the base.

00:13:02.340 He thinks that in order to win a general election, he has to align himself with the left-wing legacy

00:13:07.740 media with liberal values and progressive values on all of these sort of major issues, including fiscal

00:13:13.480 issues. And then when it comes back to the base, he just sort of doesn't want to face them because he

00:13:19.360 knows that they just won't support his agenda. And so now we are seeing many MPs come out and defend

00:13:25.600 Aaron O'Toole. We'll sort of defend Aaron O'Toole. They're not so much defending Aaron O'Toole as they are

00:13:30.540 attacking Denise Batters. They're coming out with this really sort of disingenuous attack against

00:13:35.560 her, saying that she is distracting them from their important work of holding Justin Trudeau

00:13:40.120 accountable. So instead of seeing a real defense of Aaron O'Toole saying he's the right guy for the

00:13:45.540 job, this is why, he's good on this, he's strong on this, this is the way that we can lead forward,

00:13:51.120 this is the vision that we have for a Conservative candidate. We're not hearing any of that.

00:13:55.080 What we're hearing is sort of, how dare you, Denise Batters, distract us from our important work. And so here

00:14:01.300 is Conservative MP Michelle Rumpel saying basically just that.

00:14:05.940 This is an open message to my colleague from the Senate, Denise Batters. Denise, I have been working all week on an issue

00:14:18.760 that matters to my community. Denise, I have been meeting with dozens of stakeholders, talking to

00:14:25.980 people from all across the country on how we should fight Justin Trudeau's war on the energy sector. That's what I've been doing this week.

00:14:35.180 I can't believe I have to use my Facebook platform to do this, Denise. And so I'm about to do a bunch of media on this topic

00:14:41.660 and show Canadians that, as the official opposition, we're focused on Justin Trudeau. But you know what, Denise,

00:14:47.520 I had to do this morning? I had to respond to your petition calling for a leadership review in the party.

00:14:54.120 You know what that does to me? That clears my day from being able to stand up with my constituents. You know what it does?

00:15:00.680 It's going to fill the news tonight with your petition, as opposed to my, like,

00:15:06.540 trying to hold Justin Trudeau to account to get my community back to work. I'm so frustrated with this.

00:15:13.140 I can't believe you're making me do this, Denise. I can't believe I have to use my Facebook platform

00:15:16.880 and distract from my important work. Michelle Rumpel, look, I like Michelle. I have a lot of time

00:15:20.500 for Michelle. But again, this isn't really a good take. This isn't really a good response.

00:15:24.940 When is a good time to hold a leadership review? When is a good time to say, look,

00:15:28.860 the party leader isn't representing the base anymore? Is there any good time? No. The idea

00:15:33.000 is that you kind of go through the difficult task of doing soul searching and figuring out what went

00:15:38.320 wrong in the next election, so that you can properly position yourself in the next election

00:15:42.700 to face the real issues. And so this idea that the conservative MPs were just so busy doing all

00:15:47.780 this important work, and now they have to take time away from it, I think that's pretty weak. And

00:15:52.420 again, you see that this is sort of the talking points that are being pushed by O'Toole's office,

00:15:56.140 because a lot of the MPs, a lot of MPs are remaining silent, but the few that are

00:16:00.140 are going out and sort of making a defense of him all kind of fall along these lines. So we see

00:16:06.240 Michael Barrett say this,

00:16:08.640 Conservatives should focus on holding the Trudeau Liberals accountable and finding solutions to

00:16:12.320 make life better for Canadians. There's an affordability crisis with skyrocketing inflation,

00:16:16.380 rising food and housing prices, labor supply and supply shortages. Let's get back to work.

00:16:21.260 Likewise, Melissa Lansman, a new MP in Thornhill said this,

00:16:25.760 We have a cost of living crisis, out of control inflation, a war on Canada's energy sector and a

00:16:30.360 waning reputation on the world stage. That's just a start. This helps Justin Trudeau, not Canadians.

00:16:36.320 I'm a hard no, smarten up. Okay, so again, we're sort of told this idea that conservatives are so busy

00:16:44.140 fighting on all these issues. Can you name anything that the Conservative Party is doing to address any of

00:16:48.420 these issues? Cost of living crisis, out of control inflation? Oh, I will say on inflation,

00:16:53.000 Pierre Polyev is very articulate and very good spokesperson on this issue. But again, what are

00:16:57.280 they really doing? A war on Canada's energy sector? Again, I don't really see what the Conservative

00:17:02.300 Party is doing. In fact, when I looked at the media and the news in the last week, I don't see any of

00:17:08.100 these issues in the news. I don't see Conservatives talking about them at all. What I see in the news is

00:17:12.760 Conservatives and O'Toole basically coming to all the wrong conclusions when it comes to why they lost the

00:17:18.000 election. I see them further pushing out and punishing the Libertarians or the Civil Liberties 0.92

00:17:22.580 Caucus. And I see the continuation of this Conservative apology tour. There's this long

00:17:27.220 piece in CTV all about Tory MP Tim Upple basically saying that Conservatives were super racist back in

00:17:34.700 2015. And that that whole campaign run by Stephen Harper was awful, basically just parroting all of the

00:17:40.440 worst accusations from the Liberals and from the media from 2015 and conceding, saying those things are true,

00:17:46.180 admitting that they think that the Conservatives were racist back then, which is completely absurd.

00:17:50.760 But that's a story for another day. So again, I don't see the Conservatives actually out there

00:17:55.480 talking about these issues. I see this as like a very weak defense of Aaron O'Toole. Instead of again,

00:18:01.160 saying any reason why Aaron O'Toole himself is in a good position to lead the party, you know,

00:18:06.440 the attacks are all just basically saying that this is a distraction. Well, again, there is no good time

00:18:12.060 to hold a leadership review. But if the Conservatives want to be stronger, if they want to be better

00:18:16.480 positioned, if they want to learn anything from losing the last election, I think a very good

00:18:21.060 place to start is listening to the base. If the base wants a leadership review, then the base should

00:18:26.420 have a leadership review. And it will be up to Aaron O'Toole and his MPs to articulate the case as to why

00:18:32.320 they are in a good position to lead the party again to the next election. And if they can't do that,

00:18:37.140 well, now is a good time to start looking for a new party leader. I'm Candace Malcolm and this is

00:18:42.000 The Candace Malcolm Show.

The Candice Malcolm Show - November 16, 2021

The knives come out against Erin O’Toole

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